SNAX (Berlin)snaxonline.orgOn his newly release album Shady Lights, Snax peppers hissound with his own profound life experiences from the pastseveral years. The album comes at the end of a periodmarked by the pain of surgery, the selling of his childhoodhome, and the loss of a loved one to suicide, but also the joyof marriage and commitment, and a terrific new studio spacefor working through all these ideas. But Snax counters withan album that takes all these themes and imbues them witha dose of hope. Shady Lights' seventeen tracks (includingsome strategically placed instrumental codas) swing and groove with confidence, filled with earworm choruses andslinky musical accompaniment, derived from influences asdisparate as abstract pop, musique concrète, R&B, and punkrock. The puzzle process that guided the album iscamouflaged by a sequence of distinct songs that flowtogether with purpose, sort of like life's unconnected eventsforming a whole.